


Nightmares

by lobsterkaijin



Category: One Piece
Genre: Gen, canon characters don't appear in this story, this is solely focused on masaomi's ability to connect with other people
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 16:53:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17626046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lobsterkaijin/pseuds/lobsterkaijin
Summary: In the time after Masaomi takes his place in the Donquixote Family, he receives a job from a contractor that leads him to The Temple's Gate, a rural community in the middle of an island surrounded by harsh desert and predators unlike anything he's even seen. Though the terms of the contract state for him to deliver a sacrifice for the cult's rituals, he found three children fleeing the cult and was so taken by them, he aided in their escape from this hell. They had nowhere else to go, and so he adopts them as a part of his guild. Otis Walsh, a seventeen year old boy, becomes the team's manager. Paige Walsh, Otis' thirteen year old child bride, becomes Minoru's partner in crime. Seth Walsh, Otis' three year old brother, becomes sort of like a son to Masaomi. Though Paige and Seth have no trouble fitting in to their new lives, Otis struggles to find his place.





	Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Otis Walsh and Seth Walsh belong to [Madame_Tentacle.](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madame_Tentacle)

His eyes pop open. The faint glow from the fairy lights that hang above his head bathe the room in a dim pink. Only the objects closest to him could be made out in any detail, and he knocks a few of those out of the way as he sits up and shifts out of bed. He sets his feet down and touches cold wood, recoiling with a sharp intake of breath, and then tries again, the side of his foot touching what he thinks are either prayer beads or a toy that Seth missed when he cleaned up earlier that day. It’s picked up and put on the nightstand, but with the clutter of empty glasses, dirty plates, and scented candles, there’s a good chance it’s going to slide off and fall into the void under the bed.

The Spider Monkey shifts and creaks, battling against the howling wind on the terrace to stay perched on the cliff. She shivers in the cold, but remains otherwise steadfast. He strains to hear anything else; movement, speaking, signs of life or of the thing that woke him. Rising to stand in the center of the room, he squints into the darkness, turns around to stare out the window, and turns again to the door. No one’s in the room aside from him, and there’s nothing by the window, but there’s a weight against the doorframe that his _haki_ recognizes as a person.

Creeping over and pressing his ear against it, he listens. The breath on the other side is meek, holding a flag of surrender and begging the wind for a truce. An intruder’s breathing would’ve been more even. This sounds distressed.

He slides the door open, and in falls Otis flat on his back, with his good eye wide and his bird’s nest of hair sticking out at wild angles. He only lets a little laugh escape before covering it with his hand. “Otis, have you the wish to wage war against the elements? What has possessed you to sit outside my door this chilly night?” And in his pyjamas no less, the boy must be in quite the state to brave the wind.

Otis jolts up and scrambles away. His red cheeks get redder, and his gaze falls, the surprise replaced by embarrassment. “Oh, ha ha, you know. What about you, Masao— uh, Masa? Why are you up so late?”

Masaomi shakes his head and waves a finger in Otis’ face with a click of his tongue. “Not ‘late,’ my good sir, but _early_.”

Otis opens his mouth but closes it immediately. There’s no way to argue with that, so he stares at his hands.

“I’m up because of you, anyhow.” When he says this, Otis’ head whips around to stare at him. Masaomi silences whatever apology is hanging on the boy’s tongue by getting up and retrieving his comforter from the bed to throw around Otis’ shoulders. Otis is dwarfed by the size of it, and only shrinks more when Masaomi crouches down to take a seat beside him. “Not a problem! The early birds catches the tuna!”

“I dunno if that’s right,” Otis says.

Masaomi shakes his head. “If I were a bird, I would not want to eat _worms_. What am I, a savage? No! I am a distinguished bird, with elegance and a high calibre taste. Only a meal such as tuna is befitting a bird of my status.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Language evolves, dearest Otis, yet the meaning remains the same.”

“Uh.” Otis looks skeptical at that, but doesn’t fight it. He’s long since given up on trying to follow along with the bounty hunter’s logic.

When Otis doesn’t say anything else, Masaomi settles into the silence with him, letting his thoughts be blown away by the wind to the abyss down below. He registers a sigh here or there, a stuttering breath and a whimper of pain, a muffled apology, and those too are flung into the darkness as he pretends he didn’t hear them. He only has to look at Otis’ exhausted face once to know the war he is waging with himself.

Twice Otis almost leans his head on Masaomi’s shoulder, but he catches himself and erects, pulling the comforter tighter and looking back into the night to avoid catching Masaomi’s gaze.

The effort it takes to resist sleep when the body is in need of it is a great one. Masaomi hasn’t yet met a man who could fight it, but he’d give Otis an A for effort. He may have won the first and the second siege, but the third one’s where the war takes its toll on him, and his head falls limp against Masaomi’s shoulder. Masaomi lifts his arm and allows the boy to relax and fall onto his lap. His neck will thank him for it in the morning.

He doesn’t know when he drifted off, but he wakes up when an itch in his scalp won’t go away no matter how much his sleepy self scratches at it. A puffin ducks right out of his hair when he shakes his head, landing beside Otis’ foot and quacking its dissatisfaction at him like it was him who disturbed it and not the other way around. Masaomi blinks away the haziness and laughs when the puffin flies back up to nest in his hair. “Why nest on _me_ when you’ve got a perfectly good one right under that blanket?” He waves it away.

The weight in his lap shifts, and a bleary “ _Asshole_ ” bleeds out from under the comforter. Otis peeks his head out, frowns at the sun hitting his face, and buries himself again. In milliseconds he’s jumping out and away from Masaomi, who tries to reach out to him but fails when Otis clambers further away. “Woah, uh, wow, sorry! I didn’t mean to fall a-asleep on you, sorry!”

This time it cannot be contained. Masaomi snorts and laughs, clutching his stomach and falling on his back. The boy is so gloomy that one would not expect him to be so funny! But here he is, sporting a leather eyepatch, wearing his hair shaggy, dressed in dark pyjamas that he must’ve gotten from the same store as Noru, and he’s wrapped in a pink comforter and apologizing on his hands and knees! A riot! Comical genius! A cartoon, or perhaps a caricature of a human being! “Oh— Oh my sides, oh dear! They hurt!”

His laughter dies out in a dreamy sigh, his arms fall splayed out at his sides. The attempts to lift his head produce the very neck pain he prevented Otis from getting, so he’s forced to roll onto his side and prop himself up on his elbow. Across from him Otis is glaring, though there is nothing threatening about him. It just comes across as slightly miffed.

“What’s so funny?” He’s demanding, fists clenched on the ground by his knees. “Don’t you find it _weird?_ I-I barely know you!”

Masaomi twirls a piece of hair around his finger. “Not really.”

“What?” Otis’ brows knit together, and he shakes his head. “I don’t… I don’t get it.” He doesn’t know what to look at, so he stares at a feather left behind by the puffin.

“Now what is there to find weird, dear Otis?”

Otis shakes his head again and mumbles. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Hm, now that won’t do.” Masaomi sits up and cuts the distance between them in a split second, giving Otis no time to escape from him. He grasps the boy’s shoulders to keep him in place, and stares level with him.

Otis’ lip trembles. “Wh-what?”

“Have you really been trapped so long that you cannot see the open sky above you?” Masaomi moves some hair out of Otis’ face and pats him on the head. “The confines of religious apathy have broken your bones and turned your joints to rust. Your heart is in solitary confinement, can’t you see? Imprisoned behind steel and left to sleep on cold brimstone. It is cruel what they did to you, but it is more cruel that you carry on doing it to yourself.”

He pulls the boy into a tight hug. Though Otis struggles initially, he stops, and hesitantly wraps his arms around Masaomi’s shoulders. “To be a man does not mean to be cold concrete or red hot steel. You are no longer beholden to them and their ways. Should they have the inkling to come after you, then they will have to go through _me_ to get to you, and so long as I draw breath, they will never take you away from me. I know what it is that plagues you, and I promise you I will make it better. Otis, _Otis,_ you are free. Do not be afraid, my boy.”

Masaomi’s grip tightens when Otis begins to shake. He doesn’t let go for a long time.


End file.
